Chapter 14: What the Vial Held

The crescent-shaped silver vial had come open against his chest, and what tipped into his palm was not moon-tears.

It was black, thin, and it burned where it touched.

Aquas watched it eat a red line across his lifeline before he thought to close his fingers.

My father hung this on my neck the day he drugged me and married me off.

He had called it his mother's comfort, and said never to open it.

Now he knew why.

Lucien's hand came off the bench toward the vial and stopped in the air.

It hung there a moment, and then it dropped back to his side.

He did not take it.

Aquas turned his head and looked at him.

Lucien's jaw was set, and his eyes were on the black smear in Aquas's palm, and he said nothing at all.

So he is learning.

'You are not going to grab it,' Aquas said.

'No,' Lucien said.

'Why not?'

'Because it is yours,' Lucien said. 'And because you would have stopped me.'

Aquas closed his fist around the residue and felt it bite.

The welt was already rising, red and angry, from the base of his thumb to his wrist.

'It came from my father,' he said. 'He told me it held moon-tears. He told me it was a comfort.'

'Then your father lied,' Lucien said.

'Yes,' Aquas said. 'He does that.'

He said it flat, without heat, and the flatness was the whole of what he felt.

Lucien did not reach for him and did not reach for the vial.

He stood where he was and let the silence sit, and Aquas found he was grateful for it.

'They are striking my name off the ledger right now,' Aquas said.

'I know.'

'And you are standing in a clerk's office with me instead of in that hall.'

'You told me to wait for you,' Lucien said.

'And you did,' Aquas said.

He looked at his closed fist, at the black line seeping between his fingers.

Whatever this is, it is not a charm, and it is not a comfort, and it came from the man who sold me.

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